A No-scent Option For The Reader

To Keep Readers From Getting Their Noses All Out Of Joint, Many Publications Offer Issues Without Perfume Strips.

May 14, 1992|By Deirdre Carmody, New York Times

Call it the War of the Noses - all those competing perfumed strips in magazine ads.

Or call it the War on Noses, as some magazine readers do, nostrils twitching, eyes smarting and ires rising.

''A very noxious odor invaded this house with the mail today,'' wrote Franklin Heller of Stamford, Conn., to The New Yorker last June. ''Much to our surprise, it came from the arriving copy of The New Yorker.''

''I think it is supposed to be connected with an advertisement for perfume, but it is hardly attractive,'' Heller wrote. ''I am an elderly asthmatic, allergic to perfume, and, although I have retched occasionally at some material in The New Yorker, I never vomited on it before.''

This week's New Yorker carries the first perfumed strip since the one that offended Heller last year. With this same issue, however, The New Yorker joins a small number of magazines in providing scent-free issues to subscribers who are offended by fragrances or allergic to them.

People magazine in its April 27 issue, for instance, ran a box on its Letters page titled ''Just Say No.'' The box provided an 800 telephone number for subscribers who prefer copies without perfumed strips.

Ann S. Moore, the publisher, said the box would run whenever an issue of People included a perfumed insert.

''We do it as a reader service,'' she said. ''We have total personalization available at all our printing plants. It is very simple to identify a single subscriber and then tailor the magazine to them.''

For Mirabella, which also ran a notice telling subscribers that they could receive scent-free copies, it is a more expensive production.

''The ads are supplied inserts, so we just produce issues in which we don't slip in that insert,'' said Rebecca Darwin, the publisher.

Although the volume of complaints about perfumed ads is low, publishers do take them seriously. For magazines without the proper technology, sending out separate issues is very expensive and slows down delivery.

Publishers said it was impossible to estimate the cost of sending out scent-free copies, in which the same ad appears minus the strip.

''It costs a fortune for publishers to do, and it is completely uneconomic,'' said Michael Pashby, senior vice president for circulation at the Magazine Publishers of America.

Other magazines that send scent-free copies on request include, Harper's Bazaar, House Beautiful, Town & Country and Victoria, all published by Hearst Magazines. Conde Nast, on the other hand, does not offer scent-free versions of its magazines.

Indeed, Kathy Leventhal, publisher of Allure, said a survey of her subscribers showed that 60 percent had bought a fragrance as a result of a perfumed strip in a magazine.

Camille McDonald, vice president of marketing for Ralph Lauren fragrances at Cosmair Inc., said her company's research indicated that 76 percent of women buying a fragrance said they had been introduced to it by a magazine.

''It is the overwhelmingly most efficient method of getting the product to the broadest possible audience,'' she said. ''There is no equally efficient way of reaching an audience of, say, 2 million like Glamour's. You can send a million or 2 million or 7 million vials to department stores, but sales people will often throw fistfuls of vials into a shopping bag after a sale is made.''

Perfumed inserts are a very costly form of advertising. Publishers declined, however, to estimate the cost, citing the many variations in paper and glue, to say nothing of fragrance.

The perfumed strip (commonly called a Scent Strip, a trademark of Arcade Inc., a leading maker of fragrance inserts) was introduced by Halston about a dozen years ago in New York magazine and Chicago magazine.

Over the years there have been recurring problems with the pre-release of the small capsules in the strips, causing strong odors to emanate from the inserts even before readers pulled them apart.

As perfumers became increasingly enamored of the strips, magazines began running more of them. Even unopened magazines began to smell like perfume counters.

Things grew so bad that a few years ago magazine publishers and the perfume industry drew up guidelines for perfumed strips. Postal regulations reflecting the industry guidelines eventually were adopted.

''In the last couple of years, all the people involved have been sensitive to the issue and real efforts have been made to minimize, the prerelease of fragrance until the strip is opened by the readers,'' said Michael Petrina, vice president of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, an industry group.

For the most part, the guidelines have been successful, although magazines with several perfumed strips do emit an odor. The record number of perfumed inserts may well go to the April Vogue, the magazine's 100th anniversary issue, which had five of them.

''You are not supposed to smell them before they are opened, but with each paper type the quality is different and each fragrance has its own characteristic, so that sometimes you get a very slight pre-odor anyway,'' said Joe DiGregorio of the fragrance and cosmetic division of Webcraft Technologies Inc., a printer of perfumed inserts.